KSP Visual Mods – Step-by-Step Installation Guide – v1.4.5

CollisionFX

CollisionFX adds sound effects and sparks with lighting when you collide or scrap your craft. It also adds a rubbery screech to landing gear on contact with the ground. If you’re a player whose landings are often less than ideal – and let’s face it, who isn’t? – this mod will add a little more drama to those landings.

Installation

Download and drop in GameData. The GameData folder will look something like the below.

Rareden’s Real 8K Skybox

The “skybox” is the game’s starry background. You can never actually reach those places – the skybox is just a cuboid wrapped around the playable area. Change the cuboid, change the backdrop to all of your extra-planetary adventures in KSP.

The default skybox is subtle – one can see the galactic plane stretch across the sky, but it’s largely ignorable. The right skybox can become an important part of KSP’s visual landscape.

To replace the skybox, and many other textures (suits, heads, celestial bodies, for example), you need to install a mod named TextureReplacer. (No marks for inspiration, but A+ for usefulness.) More specifically, you’ll need RangeMachine’s Unofficial Release of it, since TextureReplacer is incompatible with later versions of KSP.

Installation

(If you want something different i.e. not Rareden’s Real 8K Skybox, check the TextureReplacer thread linked above which has a list of skyboxes you can use.) Skyboxes will come with six files, each corresponding to a different face of the skybox cuboid, named as follows:

Galileo’s Sun Flares

“Sun flares” refer to the optical effect often most noticeable in KSP due to Kerbol (the sun). Making a small effort to change the flare effect with Galileo’s Sun Flares will be rewarded every time one of your spacecraft orbit across a planet’s terminus and into the sunlight.

Requirements

Installation

There are two ways to install GSF, depending on whether you use one of the nine more recent flares (GSF v1.8.0 onwards, easier to install) or one of the 25 earlier flares (prior to GSF v1.8.0).

Recent Flares (GSF v1.8.0 onwards)

Download one of the packages (I like Fusion_White), unzip, and place the GSF folder in your GameData folder. And you’re done!

If you really want to use one of the earlier flares, then click the text below to read installation instructions, but they’ve only been lightly updated since I last tested all of this on 1.2.1. In other words, the instructions for earlier flares are untested on 1.3.1 and might not work at all; worse, they may ruin your mod setup totally. This is just my best guess.

» Installation instructions for earlier flares

Earlier Flares (Prior to GSF v1.8.0)

These instructions are more involved because GSF didn’t use Module Manager in the past, so you have to overwrite some settings from other mods you have installed. (You’ll have at least one because you need Scatterer.)

Download Galileo’s Sun Flares and extract the zip file. This will provide you with a folder, GalileosSunFlares, containing four folders corresponding to the colour you’d like to provide to Kerbol – blue, red, white, or yellow. Each of these folders in turn contains six or seven folders, each corresponding to a different flare type. The one shown above, for example, is number five. (I prefer the fifth variant of the white sun, myself.) To distinguish between them you might need to try a few out, or dig into the mod folder a little more and imagine what a composite of the images might look like.

Within each flare type folder, there is a GameData folder containing a folder called “scatterer”. To recap, you have a folder structure something like this:

If you’re using SVT, overwrite the Sun.cfg file in the SVT folder with the one from the sun flare variant that you’ve chosen i.e. copy: /GalileosSunFlares/White/5/GameData/scatterer/config/Sunflares/Sun.cfg to: /GameData/SVT/configs and overwrite when prompted.

» Hide details

JayS_NL’s Custom KSP ReShade

This odd-sounding mod makes myriad tweaks and final touches to the visual feel of KSP in a manner that, in my opinion, makes the whole game a little more vibrant. It works in a similar way to GemFX or SweetFX, so-called “DLL-injectors”. See some of the comparison video below showing the action of the JayS_NL’s Custom KSP ReShade mod.

by Mulbin on KSP Forums

Installation

This is perhaps the most fiddly of all the mods listed on this page to get working. The problem begins on the first post of the thread linked to above – some of the tools referred to no longer exist in the expected form. The author has corrected the installation method in some later posts, but for posterity I’ll include everything here. There are a number of steps that you need to take to get this to play nicely with the other mods here.

Run the downloaded executable, click ‘Select game’, choose the KSP executable (I would recommend running all of these in 64-bit mode, but choose whichever one you normally use e.g. /KSP_x64.exe), then choose the Direct3D 10+ rendering API. ReShade will install files and configuration to your KSP directory.

To avoid rendering artifacts in the game (normally manifesting themselves as “stripes” around KSC and in some clouds on Laythe and Eve), you’ll need to convert some images from one format (known as DDS) to another (PNG).

If you’re using SVT, select all DDS files (with the DDS Converter program) in /GameData/SVT/SVT_Textures and convert them to PNG, outputting into the same directory. Backup the DDS files somewhere (just in case things go wrong) and delete them from this directory.

If you’re using SVE, repeat step 2 for /GameData/StockVisualEnhancements/Textures.

Download the file hosted here, called reshade.ini, and paste it directly into your KSP installation top-level directory (Kerbal Space Program). (Note that I didn’t create this file. It was configured by JayS_NL; I’m merely hosting it for posterity.)

Run KSP in forced D3D11 mode with the “-force-d3d11” flags. Do this by following the guide here.

Some windows will appear while KSP loads – this is ReShade doing its thing. Once the game has loaded, press SHIFT + F2 to open the ReShade settings menu and change the presets file to point to /reshade.ini.

Comments (48)

Everything works fine but in the last step everything breaks. If I make the textures png, the loading screen before starting a new game after the main menu lasts forever. Also, I think that you have to make terrain in svt pngs or else u get rendering stripes. Also, i get a very ugly thick black line on the far horizon over the ocean. I have tried everything please Help! (otherwise great guide thank you :D!)

Hi Andres! Thanks for trying the guide out! Your feedback is very valuable, so thank you also for taking the time to reach out.I'm sorry you're having difficulty with the final step! It is the most problematic. I've heard of similar symptoms from other users, so you're not alone, but I'm also not sure what the solution is at this stage.I did mention in the instructions to convert the SVT files from DDS to PNG, as you correctly pointed out. As it happens, I think this is the cause of the perpetual loading screen that you pointed out. I think it's actually the SVT PNG files that cause the black screen you're referring to.I haven't figured out the solution to this problem yet, but I'm working on it!The black line on the far horizon is also something I've not worked out. I honestly normally just put up with it because the rest of the game is so beautiful. It looks like an aliasing problem, but again, I'm not sure what's causing it.Sorry I couldn't be of more help. I will continue to test these instructions to see if I can reproduce the issues other people see.

Wow, that was a very fast response, thanks.
If you are kind to suggestions, i think that there adding Reentry Particle FX mod and RealPlume would be a good idea, and perhaps KSC++.
Also, please consider doing a gameplay mods and a parts mods list, I´d be glad to help.
Amazing page, glad I found it :)!

Hi Andres. Could you please try the following: 1) Delete your existing SVT folder, if it still exists. 2) Re-download SVT. 3) Unzip SVT and move to GameData, as before.Don't run ReShade after this!Hopefully you'll now be able to run without graphical problems.

Hi Isaac! Thanks for reading. Unfortunately, it's difficult to help out without knowing exactly what else you've done to your GameData directory e.g. whether you've started from scratch, whether you have other mods installed etc. Which version of KSP are you using?

Great list of mods and instructions. will a little bit of fiddling i got all but the last one to work and it looks great! I think that Module Manager is required for several of the mods and once i realized that it fixed most of the issues I was having. Also, for those who haven’t completed the mods yet, make sure you save a backup before you install the last one. that will save you a lot of time.

Hi Luke! Thanks for the feedback and extra tips! I think I left a note near the top of the page to backup, but it's always worth emphasising that one! I also believe Module Manager comes packed with one of these mods - perhaps Kopernicus? Did it not appear for you?

Hello! I have a problem with SVE. When I try using it (without configs, just as instructed) I get white Kerbin (everything-s white except terrain). After that I delete SVE but strangely enough whiteness remains until I swap my Scatterer with a new one, as if Scatterer becomes permanently damaged. So is there any way for me to get those sweet clouds? My other mods are EVE, Scatterer, GAP (giving aircraft a purpose), ContractConfigurator, ModuleManager.

Hello! I’m having some trouble with EVE/SVE. I’ve unzipped both and they’re both in my game data folder. I also put the high res textures for SVE inside of the SVE folder in gamedata. Upon loading up KSP, nothing looks different (looks like I’m only using scatterer). No clouds, city lights or anything. I’m pretty new to modding, so any help would be appreciated

Hi Dylan! Can you confirm that your GameData folder looks as described in the EVE + SVE section of the guide, that you didn't install the EVE Configs, and that you only installed one set of textures in the SVE folder?

I just checked, everything looks the same on my end. I also downloaded module manager to see if it would do anything to help but it didn't. It said that it found 26 patches but didn't seem to get SVE or EVE working. I'll remove and reinstall the mods again just to check

Thanks so much for this in-depth tutorial and guide, I managed to install all of these mods on a new game and its freaking gorgeous, the oceans, clouds and aurora just blow me away everytime, Kerbin feels so alive now.

I have problems converting 2 files in SVT. NewMunSurfaceMapDiffuse.dds, newoceanmoon00.dds: Has anyone else encountered this problem or do i just ignore it? I tried redownloading SVT and I also tried just continuing without it but then i get a transparent kerbal map…

Also, apparently there are 5 .dds I cannot convert. At the main menu continuing without, Kerbin is white, can’t launch into KSC, and in a scenario I get a transparent planet. http://prntscr.com/imfutq. Any suggestions?

Right so this is a bit embarrassing. I’m completely dumb at this sort of thing, but it seems pretty simple and I’m fairly Mac savvy. I can’t get a single mod to work OR Ckan (terminal, mono framework… too much for me??). I’m running a Mac OS High Sierra via Steam, have put (the contents of each one of these) into my Game Data folder located through steam. I restarted the game and my Mac each time, installed these one by one in the recommended order, followed your file structure detailed above, and incredibly didn’t see a single one work.
I did get EVE to show up an icon, but got an error when I pressed it saying something like “cannot find config”. No idea how or where config files should be. So just wondering, if I copied the folders into game data correctly, why does it just not work. I’m assuming it’s because of the recent update, I’m on 1.4.0. ? If I could get even one, ie scatterer to work I’d be a happy man! Here’s a screenshot of my folder: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xg0r20LNp3Vxmhf_zn-5o-P-RKk8iWy_/view?usp=sharing. Have tried with many combination of these and nothing seems to work at all. Any help would be brilliant!

Hi, i think i have a issue with EVE/SVE/Scatterer. I explain it: After i start my Game all Mods are working as intended and all looks awesome ? But the the (en)joy lasts only briefly. Because after an indefinite time or event more and more things start failing ? At first the skybox-stars are disappearing, after that the kerbol-star is disappearing and at last the planets and moons seems to disappear. So i can see the light on my ship, but no more the star which is producing it. And i can no longer see the planet’s/moon’s surface, even at daytime. At last i see only my ship and the hud, surounded by endless black. Even after game-restart the issues persists. I have to deinstall all mods, so return to stock that all returns to normal.It seems to happen if i change the SOI of two body’s. As long i am in orbit around kerbin all is fine, but if i fly to mintmus, things start to fail like described above. Same if i fly from Gilly to Eve. But here something curious: sometimes if i hit Eve’s atmosphere for aerobraking, the skybox, kerbol-star and the eve-planet return to normal (moddet) state.I think i have installed all mods correctly, because i don’t have any update-warnings at gamestart. In addition to EVE/SVE and Scatterer i have the following mods installed: KerbalEngineer, Chatterer and StageRecovery. I play KSP 1.4.1. My pc has 16GB RAM, 2GB VRAM (msi geforce gtx 750ti) and AMD FX-8350 (8core 4GHz). So i also do not think that my pc is the reason.Did i something wrong? Is this issue known?

EDIT:
I was able to narrow down the bug. It is definetely Scatterer-mod which causes the bug of disapperaing planets, moons and skybox (i call it for now on “fade to black” to save time).
Do not misunderstand: EVE, SVE and Scatterer work fine if a Vessel does not leave kerbins orbit.
If a vessel flys to mun, minmus or into kerbol-orbit -> while scatterer-mod is running

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